


Softly

by Jane St Clair (3jane)



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-06
Updated: 2011-08-06
Packaged: 2017-10-22 07:26:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3jane/pseuds/Jane%20St%20Clair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A morale exercise from Chakotay yields some unexpected answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Softly

**Author's Note:**

> Dear gods, this is actually it. The first fic I ever posted, back around 1997, I think, when I was still a teenager. So: the beginning.

Message posted to the U.S.S. Voyager e-news.  
Authorization: Chakotay 9-2-3-5-8-delta  
Distribution: all  
Subject: happy?

In my role as acting ship's counsellor, Neelix has brought it to my  
attention that crew morale is extremely low.  It's been a long trip, I  
know.  And it's hard, sometimes.  So I'm setting a new assignment for  
the ship's crew.

I want everyone to recall the most perfect day they ever spent.  Try to  
remember it in detail, down to the smells and the clothes you wore.    
Then write it down and send it to me (if I thought people would do it  
anyway, I wouldn't insist on the sending part, but I suspect that  
certain . . . individuals require supervision to get the job done).    
Everything sent to me is confidential as relates to my function as  
ship's counsellor.  If the material is not overly personal, I may ask  
some people's permission to post their days on the BBS, but they will,  
as always, have the right to refuse.  The final archive will fall under  
the care and confidentiality of the Doctor.

Note the subject of these messages as "re: happy?" for easy  
identification.  Remember, this is supposed to be fun.  No hurry, but  
think about it.  
                                                  C.

*****  
Authorization: Paris 22-8-7-3-9-epsilon  
Distribution: Cmdr. Chakotay  
Subject: re: happy?

Chakotay -

I could do without the cheap shots.  Next time you think I'm not going  
to do something, take it up with me.  

And, well, since you asked . . .

  
The most incredible day I ever spent I was fifteen in San Francisco, on  
Earth.  My father'd been made an admiral a couple of months before, but  
the change hadn't really hit me yet.  He still wasn't home very much.    
Just now he was at Fleet headquarters instead of in space.  So I woke up  
alone in the house.

I loved that house, you know?  At least I did when I was alone in it.    
Lots of windows, and I kind of liked the light.  I'm a sunshine kind of  
person, guess it gets me kind of depressed, being out here and even when  
we're close to a star it doesn't feel quite the same because we're not  
in atmosphere, maybe.  At least there was sun in New Zealand, brilliant  
colour of it coming through the leaves.  Damn, I'm rambling aren't I?    
Well, it's my day and I'll tell it the way I want to.

Anyway, I woke up with sun pouring in through my bedroom windows.  And  
when I looked out them, I could see most of the city spreading out to  
the ocean.  We were up high, and there was no fog at all.  Outside, it  
looked sort of . . . wild.  Not like something was happening, but like  
something *might* happen, and the outside was sort of waiting to see  
what it was.

Can't honestly remember how I spent most of the day.  Wore jeans and a  
white t-shirt and sandals, since you asked.  Loved those jeans.  They  
were so old they were palest of pale blues, like the colour of the sky  
just around the sun, ragged around the cuffs, rip in one knee and a hole  
on the back of the thigh, high enough up that it bordered on indecent.    
Sometimes I think I loved them because my father didn't know I had them  
and he'd have a fit if he did.  Caught a streetcar downtown and spent  
most of the morning in the market.  I used to get up really early, you  
know.  I think young people have more energy (yeah, I know, I'm just SO  
old).

San Fran market smells like fish, most days, and sandalwood and  
something really sharp and green.  Lots of stuff is sold outside,  
especially on warm days like that, and there's buskers (street  
musicians) around most of the time.  So I hung out and met some people I  
knew and we just kind of stayed like that for a while, sitting outside  
and listening and watching people.  Must've been lunchtime before we  
noticed.  'Cause there wasn't much air traffic, and what there was was  
mostly official looking and in a hurry.  How often do you see an empty  
sky over the spaceport city at the centre of the Federation?  Try never.    
Except then.

And then people were all looking at the sky, and it wasn't as bright as  
it had been, but it was *hot*.  There were massive layers of clouds  
coming in, even though we weren't getting any wind on the ground.  And  
the atmosphere in the market was kind of tense, too, and people were  
drifting away, so I went home.

At home I caught the newsvids.  I guess the weather-control satellites  
had gone down a couple of days before.  And it wouldn't normally have  
been a problem, but the weather systems they'd been setting up at the  
time had kind of merged, and I guess they figured we were in for kind of  
a wild show.  Got the official announcements that meant "batten down the  
hatches, boys, this one is gonna be big."  They didn't even quite know  
where, or exactly when.  So all air traffic stopped.

Star Fleet went ballistic.

After the tenth or so call I just posted a message saying my father was  
at SFHQ and stopped answering the phone.  But it was still this  
gorgeous, wild day, and the sky was *huge*.  Sounds stupid, but I don't  
think I've ever seen it bigger.  Our house was way up in the hills, and  
if I laid on my back on the deck all I could see if I sorta squinted was  
the sky, which was all grey and sort of dangerous looking.

I knew I had homework (I *always* had homework - never got much done in  
groups - not much changes, does it?  I work better on my own, but that's  
not what we're talking about here, is it?  Right, on with the tale . . .  
) but I didn't want to be doing it.  So I sort of wandered around the  
house until I came into the living room.  It had this massive glass wall  
with doors in it, that was where you could see the ocean from, and the  
piano against the solid wall opposite it.  Didn't want to stop looking  
out, but I wanted to play.

Gods, this is stupid.  Here I am harping about the view.  But the view  
is most of what I remember about the day.  All the grey sky getting  
darker and the ocean that was moving so I could see it even from the  
hills.  And the trees around the house were making noise because there  
was wind by this time, sort of a rustling, whispering sound, but getting  
pretty loud.

I started playing the piano.  Playing a piece I'd memorized a couple of  
years before, late 20th century piano music.  It was this really simple,  
repeating melody with a complex harmony line, and there are a bunch of  
variations on it in speed and pattern, so you could play it for a long  
time, and the music felt like that day, wild and grey and powerful and  
something that you don't have any words for just . . . .  Yeah.

It got dark while I was playing there.  Shouldn't have, so early, but  
the storm was coming in, and the clouds were almost black, and I could  
barely see the keys but by then I'd been playing for so long that some  
of the time I had my eyes closed and the rest it was just my hands.    
Playing like that is like flying, you just have to *know* because the  
processes have nothing to do with the music.

It fucking nearly scared me out of my skin.  There was someone else in  
the house.  I must have jumped about three feet.  And then they turned  
the lights on and it was this girl in a Starfleet uniform.

She was beautiful.

(Don't make fun of me, Chakotay.  I know you think I think any woman I  
have the slightest chance of getting into bed is beautiful, but I wasn't  
thinking about that at the time.  I was a kid.  And I just sat there on  
the edge of the piano bench and stared at her, must've looked like a  
fucking idiot with my mouth hanging open . . . but it doesn't really  
matter.)

You want details?  She had brown hair that was pulled back in a kind of  
ponytail, but with bangs to make it soft around her face, and grey-blue  
eyes that looked ghostly above the teal of her uniform sciences, blue  
and black.  And I said she was a girl but she wasn't, not really, she  
was maybe ten years or a little more older than me.  The glass doors  
were open she'd come in that way and the room smelled like salt and  
tense air and something that I found out later was her perfume, peach-  
smell.  And she was saying she was sorry she scared me, there hadn't  
been any answer when they'd tried to call from SFHQ to see if I was  
alright, and I hadn't answered the doorbell (I hadn't heard the  
doorbell), so she'd come around and let herself in.  The way she said it  
wasn't frantic, it was just like she was explaining herself, I guess  
because she thought I was pissed because I was staring at her so hard.

I finally got it straight that she was my father's aide, the one he'd  
had while he was still a captain, and she was down with him in San  
Francisco until he got his new staff sorted out.  They knew the storm  
was going to be bad.  My dad (she said "dad" and I know she was lying,  
because it sounded like she was trying to assure me and it would never,  
ever have occurred to my father) didn't want me to be by myself, even  
though he had to stay down there all night.

What I did after that I don't remember exactly, except that she stayed  
and I turned on some lights because there weren't any on anywhere in the  
house.  And since I was being supervised, I went off to do my homework.

I was never good at physics beyond the parts I needed to know to be able  
to fly.  I had this massive assignment to get through and I didn't get a  
lot of it, so eventually I got angry.  It was one of those things I knew  
I was going to get shit for later, because physics was really important  
on the academy entrance exams, but I couldn't concentrate enough to wrap  
my mind around the problem.  Like I said, I got angry.  And I threw the  
padd into the wall.

She was standing in the doorway.  She saw it.  But she didn't say  
anything, she just picked up the padd and checked to see if it still  
worked, and then she carried it over to me and sat down and then she  
explained it so I could understand.  I wasn't even thinking then about  
her sitting close to me or about the way she smelled.  And finally she  
just looked at me and said, "Come on, let's go get dinner."

We ate in the living room.  The clouds were almost black, but they  
reflected all the city lights so you could see every ridge in them.  I'd  
never seen clouds like that.  The weather on earth is always really  
closely controlled, so there's never anything violent or dangerous,  
because I guess that three and four and five hundred years ago the  
weather used to kill people.  The clouds were called thunderheads, she  
said.  She'd seen them on another planet, once.  But they weren't  
actually doing anything, just roiling around.  After a while she was  
really quiet and then she asked me to play the piano again.

I was going to play the same piece, but it sounded too big with another  
person in the house, so I played another piece from the same collection,  
one that was quieter and simpler and sounded really sad.  "Piano," you  
know, it means "softly."  The way it's supposed to be.  And after that,  
because that piece had an ending, even if the first one didn't, I tried  
one of the variations.  It started out sounding wounded, like the music  
was hurt and slow and some of the notes were missing.  Then it got loud  
really suddenly and became the first song again and at the end (when I  
played it alone, I usually got the house computer to add the orchestra  
that's behind the piano in the last section) there was thunder.

I had never, ever heard thunder before.  It was low and sort of ran  
through my body and I went pounding out onto the deck to see what it  
was.  Stupid, but I was a kid and it was something totally alien to me.    
So I saw the lightning coming in off the sea, and I felt it when the  
rain started.  There still wasn't much wind, but the rain was so thick I  
thought I was going to drown.  Got absolutely soaked.

Then she brought me back into the house.  I was so embarrassed when I  
looked at her, but she just smiled that little, tight smile, the one  
that says, yeah, it's that way, so I went off and got changed into  
sweats and another t-shirt and came back towelling my hair.  She was  
sitting on the sofa facing the windows, looking out at the storm.  The  
wind had started; it was screaming loud and the rain came in waves and  
broke against the glass.  Every time there was lightning it lit up her  
face and showed all the edges of it.  Then it was incredibly loud and we  
lost lights.  She said that was close, and when the lights didn't come  
back right away I understood the power grid was down.  Which had never,  
ever happened.

Dark in there.  I ended up sitting on the couch with her, and she taught  
me how to count the one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi between lightning  
and thunder to figure out how far away it is.  The measurements come out  
in miles -- old Earth measurement units that only die-hards were still  
using by the early 21st century, but primitive, like lightning.  And it  
felt good.

Sat there with her for hours.  At some point, she started rubbing my  
neck and I hadn't realized until then I was so tense.  When she touched  
me, it was like all the shit and everything I'd ever fucked up and all  
the crap between me and my father didn't really matter and maybe I was a  
good person.  Or maybe only that she was a good person.  It was cold in  
the house without power so we ended up wrapped in afghans, still looking  
at the storm.  And it seemed so natural when she came up behind me and  
wrapped her arms around my shoulders and pulled me back against her.    
Nobody'd held me like that since my mother died, when I was eight.

We fell asleep like that, on the couch.  I know I did first, but when I  
woke up she was asleep too.  It was still storming, but not so loudly,  
and there were still no lights.  The whole valley dark like there was no  
city there at all.  She was behind me on the couch, pressed up against  
my body and both of us under both the afghans, one arm around my waist.    
I remember it took me forever to turn over but I wanted more than  
anything to face her.  And when I was turned her arm was still around  
me.  And I felt *safe*.

(I am going to tell you something now, Chakotay, because I know you are  
laughing at me.  I *like* women.  I don't mean as objects.  I mean I  
like them as people, I like them as living things, I like them as some  
kind of magical thing in a complementary form to ours.  I like to talk  
to them, and to be around them.  They see things differently.  I do not,  
contrary to popular belief, view them as sexual receptacles.  I just  
behave that way sometimes.  I never said I wasn't an asshole.  I am.    
But I like women and I think sometimes they deserve better than me.  Not  
the point.)

That was the first woman I ever wanted to make love to.  Not to screw,  
or to fuck (yes, there's a distinction, and someday I'll explain it to  
you), but to touch and worship and give her every part of myself that  
was worth anything and make her happy and make us one person for just a  
second.  But who was I kidding?  So I just laid there and traced out all  
the lines and planes of her face with one of my fingers and appreciated  
the way her body was warm and the way it fit against mine.  And I know  
my head was on her shoulder when I fell asleep again.

So.  That's the story.  I'm not sure, now that I look at it, that that  
is the most perfect day I can remember, but it's the one I needed to  
talk about.  The details there are weird, like I know we talked more  
than I'm writing down, but I mostly can't remember what it was we said.    
I talk a lot, but it doesn't mean anything, mostly.

Oh, and if you happen to like loose ends tied up, she wasn't there when  
I woke up in the morning.  I'd sort of changed position, so she could  
have gotten out without waking me, and I guess she did.

                                                  P.

*****  
Authorization: Chakotay 9-2-3-5-8-delta  
Distribution: Lt. Thomas Paris  
Subject: cheap shots

Tom-  
     The ". . . individuals" were mostly B'Elanna and the Captain.    
B'Elanna would do anything to avoid an activity like this, and the  
Captain would put it at the bottom of her list of things-to-do,  
underneath the reviewing the sanitation of the jefferies tubes ;-).  I  
didn't have you particularly in mind.  
     Tom, what was her name?  
                                                  C.

*****  
Authorization: Paris 22-8-7-3-9-epsilon  
Distribution: Cmdr. Chakotay  
Subject: re: cheap shots

With all due respect, Commander, don't push your luck.  
                                                  P.  
       
*****  
Authorization: Janeway 0-0-47-5-1  
Distribution: Cmdr. Chakotay  
Subject: re: happy?

Chakotay -  
Do you have the authority to order your captain to do this?  I think we  
should take it up with Command :-).

I suppose I feel uncomfortable writing this.  The day that came to mind  
wasn't among the ones that should have.  Appropriate would be something  
with Mark and Molly Malone, on Earth or one of the colony worlds (we did  
take the dog on vacation from time to time, if the quarantine rules  
weren't too strict), high summer and sunshine and true love.  But Mark  
fades for me a lot, too many nights and too many light years away.  I  
know he takes care of Molly for me, and I hope he's happy.  But  
sometimes I wonder if he loved me enough to have his life as devastated  
by my disappearance as I imagine it was.  Maybe not.  But, as I imagine  
Seven would tell me, melancholy is irrelevant.  I believe you asked me  
for something about a day.

The day that came to mind isn't what I'd think of as a good day at all.    
Most of it was hellish.  It was after the Al Batani, the transition  
period that I spent on earth while the captain (admiral?) got settled.  
I was never one for being earth-bound, even for a little while.  Still,  
he asked me to come with him, and I could hardly say no, could I?  So it  
was day after day at stuffy headquarters (they keep a separate  
atmosphere there, you know, to prevent contamination) sitting at a desk  
and reading reports and wishing I was back on a ship - *any* ship.

A *charming* morning, let me tell you.  The weather control satellites  
for the *entire planet* had gone down, and suddenly we were stuck with a  
storm brewing.  On Earth. It wasn't Fleet's responsibility to deal with  
the satellites (that's planetary), but we accounted for something like a  
third of the surface-to-orbit traffic out of the city on any given day,  
and orders had come in that we had to ground everybody *right now*.

So we've got duty officers screaming on one line and Admin on the other  
demanding how they were going to rework the transport schedules and at  
some point the admiral swept through and demanded to know wasn't there  
anything *I* could be doing to solve the problem.

He's lucky I didn't throttle him with his own admiral's bars.

And then, about mid-afternoon, one of the secretaries crept in and asked  
me didn't the admiral have a child or something?  Home alone?  I said I  
didn't know.  I had to think about it.  (You know, even when we were  
doing deep space work and we were out for months at a time, he never  
kept family pictures or mementoes on his desk.  I served with the man  
for three years before I learned he wasn't just adrift in space and  
time.)  The secretary'd been calling the house for hours, as I  
understood it, but there was just a repeating message, no answer.

I asked the admiral myself.  The staff were refusing to enter his office  
(it was still like that the day I left Earth for the last time - I meant  
to call and say goodbye, but he was in a meeting and no one was willing  
to interrupt him - ever the dedicated officer, I suppose).  I asked him  
about the child and what would he like to do, but he just dragged a hand  
across his eyes and said, 'Kathryn, you deal with it.'

I remember leaving headquarters and being struck by the change in the  
day.  When I'd gone in that morning, the whole city had been sunny and  
bright.  Now there were thunderheads pouring in off the sea and wind so  
strong I thought I might blow away.  It was the kind of dark that you  
get before the sun goes down, black sky making black land.  I took the  
public transports as far as I could, then walked the last kilometre and  
a half because the routes didn't go into the admiral's home ground.  
Even in the 24th century, we have elites, and in San Francisco they are  
those who do not take the public transports to work.

I'd never been to his house in all the years we'd worked together.  It  
was a shock to see it like that, outlined against the sky with the city  
lights refracting off it.  The building was two-storey, the lower part  
built into the hill and the upper section almost completely glass.  Late  
22nd century, the style that became popular immediately after they  
stabilized the San Andreas fault.  I suppose it was just a kind of  
triumph, a declaration that yes, San Franciscans too could live in glass  
houses if they so chose.

Maybe I panicked when there was no response at the door.  You didn't  
fail when the admiral sent you to do something, but I could just picture  
his face if I broke in and got arrested when the security alarms went  
off.  ('Oh, but it was on your orders, Sir.  Now if you could just come  
and bail me out, please.'  Sure.)  So I walked around the house, looking  
for another door, a way in, even a sign of life.  All the windows were  
dark.  On the side facing the ocean, there was a deck on the second  
level, and sliding doors, so I went to check those.

There's a level of light that allows you to see through a glass surface  
with no reflection at all, and I think it must have been just dark  
enough for me to see directly through.  I had expected, I suppose, a  
child of six or seven, and probably a girl.  Someone who would arouse a  
lot of concern being home alone.  But that wasn't reasonable.  The  
admiral's wife had been dead longer than that.  What I was looking at  
was one of the polished, wealthy children you see in the city markets,  
perfectly moulded and glittering like sunlight, inactive and  
untouchable.  Except that this one was alone, sitting on a piano bench.    
So still that if I hadn't caught the dip of a shoulder as the right hand  
came flying up the keyboard, I might have assumed he wasn't playing.  I  
hadn't been expecting a boy, you see.

I don't remember opening the door, only standing in the room and the  
music hitting me.  Music for wild weather like the planet hadn't see in  
over a century.  This boy concentrating on his playing until he didn't  
realize I was there.  Incredible shaggy blond hair and pale clothes that  
lost all their colour in the dim light, everything in shades of grey  
like a pencil sketch.  He was . . . angelic.

And then he stopped playing and whirled to look at me and I don't know  
how long we spent staring at each other before I turned on the lights  
and broke the contact between us.  I felt like such a fool.  I was an  
unannounced stranger who'd just walked into this boy's home and stood  
staring at him while he played the piano.  I suppose I babbled something  
out that resembled an explanation because he finally stopped looking  
like a deer caught in headlights.  He left the room turning, turning on  
lights as he went.

I spent a long time after that staring at the storm blowing in.  It's  
one thing to see violent weather on a half-tamed world.  It's quite  
another to see at the heart of the Federation.  Like for everything  
we've built and learned and explored, we don't really matter.  A couple  
of days without our interference and ancient patterns start reasserting  
themselves.  

It was damned near black out there before I even remembered that I was  
supposed to be . . . doing something.  For want of a better word,  
babysitting.  And went looking for him through the house.

I remember finding his bedroom door a split second before a padd came  
flying towards it.  About then I really believed he had to be the  
admiral's son -- no one else (except maybe a certain half-Klingon  
engineer of our mutual acquaintance) would get angry enough to throw  
hardware against the wall.  Then I got hit in the stomach with his look.    
Like everything he had depended on something that he couldn't do.  Rage  
and frustration and fear.  And every thought I had told me to *fix it*.

I remember sitting down beside him on his bed and falling into teaching  
mode.  Explain *everything* until you isolate the problem.  I don't  
remember what we were working on.  I remember more how anonymous the  
room was - blank walls, standard furniture, solid colours - and I  
remember there were books beside the bed.  Printed books, mostly 20th  
century.  And what's bizarre is that I remember what most of them were  
(boy, you can tell how much *I* was paying attention to what I was doing  
at the time).  "Catch-22," "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," "Coming  
Through Slaughter," "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."    
Sitting there, half watching the room, half concentrating on the boy  
beside me, covering his hands with my own as if I were showing him a  
physical motion, as protective as I've ever felt in my life.

We finished the afternoon like that.  The bedroom windows faced east, so  
I couldn't see the storm coming in until it was on top of us, and by  
then it was dark and I was wondering how much time had passed.  

Part of my fix-it attitude went into indulgence mode, and I elected for  
something really messy for supper and we ate it on the furniture.  (I  
only tell you this now because we're in the Delta Quadrant and you can't  
tell anyone.  I've never seen a cleaner house in my entire life.  The  
sort of place that you stand very still in the middle of a room because  
you're afraid to touch anything for fear you might get it dirty.)

The living room had the most incredible west-facing windows, Chakotay,  
the view like you can't imagine.  We could still make out the clouds.  I  
don't remember him getting up or going to the windows, only the awe in  
his face I saw reflected in the glass.  Of course he would never have  
seen storm clouds before.  He lived on earth, where such things don't  
happen.  And it is a sight, even if you've seen it before, it never gets  
old.  I remembered the sound of the piano when I'd come in, how  
perfectly it matched the day.  How perfectly it matched his expression,  
standing there, watching.  I needed so badly to hear him play.

I can't fully explain now the effect that sound had on me.  It came out  
of his playing, the self-absorption and the simultaneous attention to  
the day and the room and to me sitting there listening to him.  Soft  
sounds, touching me and making me warm and relaxed after a miserable day  
that had suddenly improved.  Beautiful hands stroking ivory keys.  And  
thunder.

The effect on him was electric.  The music broke off so suddenly, the  
lingering waves of it in the air sounded damaged, and he was already  
gone.  Gone out, into the rain.  He stood there and he just looked so  
god-damned lost and for a second . . .

Chakotay, it was like I got just a flash of everything that was coming  
up for him, but it was gone so fast I couldn't grasp it.  It just left  
me standing there with the knowledge that the teenager standing there  
getting soaked in the rain was headed for much more, or something much  
different, than a textbook Starfleet career.  And I let him stand there  
for a long time before it occurred to me to call him in out of the rain.

I thought he must be angry at me for staring at him like that, but he  
never said a thing, just went past me back into the house and left me  
there.

I curled up on the couch and wondered where my mind was going.  If he  
hadn't been so much younger than me, I would have thought I was falling  
in love with him.  I had to be out of my mind, or experiencing  
dramatically displaced mothering urges.  A need to fix it, to hold him.    
I think I would have given my soul for it.

And there was lightning.  I'd been counting the distance, absently, the  
old-fashioned way that I'd once had someone show me of measuring the  
speed of sound.  Maybe it was audible because when I turned back to the  
room from the windows, he was there, watching me, and he had the  
strangest expression on his face.  

We lost power suddenly, and we got the one sight that few in the  
universe have been privileged to see: the city of San Francisco in  
complete and utter darkness.  It made the lightning more immediate, the  
sounds louder.  I don't know when he came to sit beside me on the couch.    
I'd started talking, quietly, to fill the silence between thunderpeals,  
and at some point we came into contact and stayed that way.

Just that night, I had a peace as strong as any I can remember.  I could  
have stayed there forever, stroking that golden hair until he slept in  
my arms.  For a long time after he dozed off I stayed like that, with my  
cheek against his hair, watching the storm.  Thinking that if I was the  
admiral, I wouldn't have given this boy up, even for a starship, that I  
would have kept him with me any way I could.  

And simply meditating on the storm.  It was so utterly primitive, hour  
after hour of electricity from the upper atmosphere reaching down nearly  
to the planet's surface.  We couldn't escape from that world then, not  
by transporter or by ship.  And in the dark, dark in the house and dark  
all over San Francisco, it could have been that there weren't ten  
billion people on Earth, or even ten.  Maybe no one at all.  And I  
wasn't going to leave him, ever, if I could help it.  So I arranged us  
as best I could on the couch, under a blanket of some kind against the  
cold in that room, so that I ended up pressed between his body and the  
sofa back.  Smelling him, like sunshine and clean clothes and sea salt,  
and smelling the rain outside, and resting in the warmth of his body  
until I fell asleep.

Why can I remember even now what I was thinking, Chakotay?

I dreamed that night, the kind of dream that you never grasp fully, but  
that clings to the edge of your consciousness for years, sometimes  
immediate and sometimes frustratingly out of reach.  What I can remember  
now is touch.  It felt as though I were being drawn, defined out of wet  
air by fingers softly raining on my skin.  I was never touched by that,  
not by a parent or a friend, not by any lover.  No one has ever loved me  
as much as that touch.  I dreamed it was penetrating my skin and  
touching the thing underneath that isn't rank or name, the only word  
that comes to mind for it is self.  And love.

When I woke before morning, he'd changed position and we were sleeping  
face to face.  Wound so tightly around one another that between the  
numbness of sleeping too long in one position and my eyes fuzzy with  
tiredness and the dim light, I couldn't identify specific limbs as mine.    
At that moment, I loved him more than Mark or anyone before him.

But I must have stirred when I woke because it disturbed him and he  
shifted away from me and broke the contact, rolling almost to the edge  
of the couch.  And I knew I had to leave.

What I remember last is watching him sleep before I slipped out the  
door.  He was so young, and I was still haunted by my dream and by the  
thing I'd almost seen the night before.  There was the thin kind of  
light that comes at dawn when you face away from the sunrise, and there  
was my sunshine sleeping on the couch when I slipped out, softly.

  
Well, I'm sure that's not at all what you had in mind, and I certainly  
don't feel much better, but I needed to tell someone, and there's a  
comfort in remembering.

                                                  K.

P.S.  There's a song my mother sang to me fairly often when I was very,  
very young.  It's a song for a small voice, or a very quiet one.  I  
remember it only vaguely at the moment, just the line "you'll never  
know, dear, how much I love you."  As much that as anything, maybe.

  
*****  
Authorization: Chakotay 9-2-3-5-8-delta  
Distribution: Cpt. Kathryn Janeway  
Subject: . . .

     . . .

                                                  C.


End file.
